Since I consider myself a crappy D&D rules player, I'm thinking about playing with a party of all-18 characters for my 1st playthrough, hoping to teach myself better strategies by watching how the AI handles the various battles. Is there any in-game penalties for taking the munchkin path? I was thinking of naming them Dorothy-the cleric, Tinman and Lion for the knights, and Scarecrow as my wizard

Thanks! I ended up not needing to play with the munchkin party. Once I figured out the true power of the Path of Wand, all my troubles have gone away. I'm playing with a standard party and killing everything with the wizard. I've got two knights and a cleric that keep the monsters off my wizard till he wands everything to death.

I'm a big believer in Web and Fireball. Once you get the spell, just use circle of death to get rid of lower level enemies. Then have the cleric cast protection from arrows on the mage, so that he doesn't get hit by those pesky arrows when he's laying down the webs and blasting with the fireballs. Icestorm works well for those who have resistance to fire, so I cast it occasionally, just to keep the opponents honest.

I'm liking the game, but are the 10-12 places on the map the only places in the whole game? If so, I'm way over halfway done. It could be you have a whole other set of maps too, I don't know. I'm in the hill giant fortress right now and I'm slaughtering them because they can only fight one vs my two I crafted the highest constitution equipment that I can so that my two fighters and my cleric have well over 100 hit points. My mage just hides if melee approaches.

I use two wands-heal critical wounds and fireball for most large battles. I don't bother with spells against hill giants. I just let the meat shields take care of them and let the cleric heal their ouchies, afterwords.

I figure I'll have to change strategies for sure facing the two bigger giant classes. I haven't faced them yet, but my plan is to go with more confusion, blind, and other combat debuffs to keep the big hits to a minimum. A lot of that will be dependent upon space. If we're in a big open area, it lowers the options for the party. If that is the case then I'll try placing webs so that there is just a narrow corridor to the party. If wall of stone is in the game, then I might see if I can funnel them into a kill zone. If not, I'll just try to slow the approach down.

Following up on my own post, but I've reached the two bigger giant classes and my typical strategy is working fine for the most part. My knights are coming into their own, now that their equipment is pretty upgraded. I've got weapons with 10 levels of enchantment on them so they hit for 200 points/turn now and we're having no troubles mowing down the frost and fire giants. I did have to change my fireball wand for a icestorm, which is a little weaker. It doesn't matter much though because there's a handy campfire so I can keep mass hold monster and disintegrate and such in play. I'm kinda hoping for something to come kick my butt. My guys are getting arrogant. We're nearing the end though, so high level D&D characters are a little bit god-like anyway. I need a battle with something like 30 or 40 giants, that would be cool because I'd eventually start running out of higher level spells in that type of battle. As long as the groups are 8-10 or less, it's a cake walk.

After the game ends - if you choose to play on - there is a fight at the castle of the knights (when you talk to the knights commander). That fight should suffice. Also keep Karef and Quoris alive otherwise I count it as fail.

I've done everything but the temple in Vanicia, and I'm wondering which weapon to enchant with the chalice: My cold-iron halberd or adamantine dwarven waraxe? Are there going to be more strong demons or iron golems?